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The mainboard - we'll have a quick overview of the more important features of the 925XE chipset and skip the less important things like USB/FireWire, Serial ATA 150 and that awesome 1 Gigabite LAN etc (since these are common to most chipsets now). This chipset is basically 100% the same as your 925X chipset, but now has added support for the 1066MHz Front Side Bus.
When you look at the CPU position you'll of course notice the new Socket LGA (Land Grid Array) 775. Back in June Intel needed to make that move as they ran into limitations with the Socket FCPGA (Flip Chip Pin Grid Array) 478 design.
The 775 based processor means nothing else then 755 pins... ehm whoah wait... but not on the processor anymore! It's completely different as your CPU does not have the pins anymore, instead your mainboard CPU socket now has them. To prevent damage during transport everything needs to be well covered. Personally I am not at all a fan of Socket 775 from a simple practical point of view. The pins are easily damaged.
The reference board includes Intel's South Bridge, the ICH6R for the Lions 'roar' factor. It is a slightly more mature feature over the standard ICH6 as it contains important additional RAID features that sport your standard RAID 0 / 1 features.
Passively cooled on top the Northbridge, and again passively cooled the Southbridge located below it.
There's also something else there, Integrated High-Definition sound. Intel designed this to integrate quality sound in Intel desktop platforms to meet the demands required of a modern PC in the home and office or even your HTPC (Home Theater PC). The previous AC'97 solution was capable of delivering a maximum of Six Channels of Audio at 48KHz/20-bit Audio quality, the Intel HD specification manages 8 channels at 192KHz 32-bit. With this solution Intel can support all modern Dolby formats like Dolby Digital EX and even DTS ES. Small note for the freaks, the software provides real time Dolby Digital (AC3) encoding and can take standard stereo signals and output them, digitally and as a Surround. Not bad, not bad at all.
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925XE Chipset Details | |
| Front Side Bus |
1066MHz, 800MHz FSB Support |
| Socket | LGA775 Processor Package |
| Memory Bus | Dual Channel DDR2 400 or DDR2 533Mhz RAM Supported Flex Memory Technology Supported |
| Expansion Interfaces |
|
| Storage Technology Support |
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| Integrated Audio | Intel High Definition Audio |
| Other Technologies |
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When we look at the photo's be sure to have a look at that 24-pin power connector, that's right I said 24 pins. This is new, when you look at your PSU you'll notice a 20 pin connector. Don't worry, it'll still fit, yet 4 pins will be empty. Future PSU's will have 24 pins. BTW small warning, don't even think about trying to connect the additional 4-pin connector that your PSU supplies on there! That still has its own socket on the mainboard.
